PHILADELPHIA — He didn’t have a white flag taped to the underside of his seat, but Sixers coach Doug Collins didn’t need one. Sending out Kwame Brown and Nick Young in the fourth quarter seemed like an open acceptance of defeat.

Then Young canned a few jumpers and the Sixers stayed within an arm’s reach of a team that probably had no business winning at Wells Fargo Center.

“Had to try to do something,” said Collins, whose Sixers lost to New Orleans, 111-99. “What do they say is the definition of insanity – doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results? So I didn’t want you to call me insane after the game.

“I had to try something. The disappointing thing for me, night after night, is I don’t know what I’m going to get. I think maybe some of the people watching our games are saying, ‘what the heck am I doing?’ And sometimes I wonder, because I can’t find answers. It’s not like I’m not trying.”

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No fourth-quarter flurry of baskets or second-half scoring surge Tuesday night was going to bail out the Sixers, who played without care for three quarters.

The Hornets (12-26), bottom-feeders in the Western Conference, got 23 points and eight assists from Greivis Vasquez, and 10 points and seven rebounds from gold-medal-winning forward Anthony Davis. Forget about the individual stats for New Orleans – the Sixers made it too easy for the Hornets, who seemed to have uncontested shots aplenty. The Hornets shot 53 percent and scored well above their 91 points-per-game average.

The Sixers (16-23), who have lost six of seven, won Saturday by holding down high-scoring Houston. Tuesday, they looked awful defensively. And there shouldn’t have been a lack of motivation on their end: they were going for their first winning streak since late November, when they won three in a row.

So much for that.

“Inconsistency. That’s the definition of inconsistency,” Collins said. “You can look it up in the dictionary.”

Collins was asked whether he thought the Sixers had turned a corner.

“No, no. I have to see it more than once. Turning the corner is, to me, consistency,” he said. “Until I see that consistently, it’s hard for me to get excited about that.”

There was little to excite Collins.

The play of centers Lavoy Allen (15 minutes, zero rebounds) and Spencer Hawes (21 minutes, two rebounds) was enough to make Collins apoplectic. Their defense was nonexistent and their offense was present in stretches.

Except for Jrue Holiday, who pulled off his usual act of supplying a little bit of everything, the Sixers weren’t worthy of praise. Holiday had 29 points, 11 assists, four rebounds and four steals in the loss. And Nick Young totaled 14 points in 12 fourth-quarter minutes, which did nothing more than excite 17,304 fans who had been lulled to sleep by the three quarters prior.

“They outran us, they outrebounded us, they beat us in the paint, they outexecuted us,” Collins said. “They beat us in every way they possibly could. That’s very disappointing.”

If the Sixers had a pulse, they did a good job masking it.

They hit a half-dozen 3-pointers in the first quarter, a season-high for any single frame. Big deal. They clawed to within two points of New Orleans, at 53-51, early in the third quarter. Stop the presses. Nick Young, who hadn’t played in seven quarters, remembered how to bring something to the table. Ready the confetti.

The blunders outweighed the positives – like Allen getting whistled for a moving screen coming out of a timeout, or Hornets rookie Anthony Davis showing up Hawes by blocking his layup, then elbowing him in the chest.

“We tried our best and it didn’t work out,” said the Sixers’ Thad Young. “There’s been a sense of urgency. Each and every game counts from this point on. We’re fighting for our lives. We’re fighting for our hope.”

Speaking of hope, the Sixers still have it. Ten of their next 11 games are at home, and they heard Monday that injured center Andrew Bynum likes his odds to return by February.

Collins was asked whether he thought the Sixers have been tuning him out.

“Are you kidding me? Seriously, you’re kidding me, right? You’re digging,” Collins said. “The answer to that is no. … That’s what you do when you lose games. That’s the road you go down. That must mean they’re not listening to me.”

The Sixers have to hope listening translates to winning. Sooner rather than later.